Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
Teacher Education Collaborative (STEMTEC)
Proposal
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The various parts of STEMTEC will be under direct administrative
supervision of the STEMTEC Council. Day-to-day operations will
be centered in the offices of the STEM Education Institute and
the Five College/Public School Partnership.
- STEMTEC Board: Basic policies will be set by the
Board, composed of the PI's, representatives of the school
districts, higher education partners, Continental Cablevision,
and PALMS (the state SSI program). It will meet at least
twice each year.
- STEMTEC Council: The PI's will meet regularly as
the Council to review all aspects of the project, assess
progress, plan for the next phases and make ongoing adjustments
as required. PI Sternheim will take the principal
responsibility for monitoring all project activities. He
will also be responsible for overseeing the technology components
of the program.
- Curriculum Committees: Each curriculum committee
will have a chair who will schedule its academic-year sessions,
track the progress of the committee members, and prepare
summary reports of the changes and revisions incorporated
into the courses and curricula. The chairs will meet monthly
as a Coordinating Council chaired by Co-PI Yuretich
which will ensure that the revisions in the undergraduate
programs are proceeding in accordance with STEMTEC
goals.
- Teaching Experiences and Mentoring: Co-PI's Feldman
and Wilson will be responsible for supervising the
development of teaching opportunities in the colleges and
the schools, as well as recruiting and working with the
mentor teachers.
- Evaluation and Assessment: Evaluation and assessment
will be carried out at several levels by an integrated team
directed by the Donahue Institute. The evaluation, which
is described in detail in Section 14, will focus on summative
and formative evaluation of two major areas: course reform
and teacher recruitment. Summative evaluation will be done
primarily by the Institute. Formative evaluation will be
done by members of the team who can remain in close contact
with teachers and students in the project. Dr. Eric Heller,
Director of Research, Evaluation and Information Technology
at the Donahue Institute, will oversee the design and implementation
of the evaluation plan. He has extensive experience over
the past decade in program evaluation for a broad range
of client groups and substantive domains. As an organization
reporting to the President of the five UMass campuses, the
institute is positioned to perform an independent summative
evaluation of the project, and yet is physically located
at the Amherst campus. Dr. Mary Dean Sorcinelli,
Director of the UMass Center for Teaching, will oversee
the standard formative evaluations of the reformed courses.
Dr. Sorcinelli has many years of experience in providing
critical feedback and course revision suggestions to UMass
faculty. The Center will also conduct more intensive formative
evaluations such as video tape analysis in selected courses.
Dr. John Clement will conduct intensive formative
evaluation and research in selected courses. He has twenty
years of experience in the analysis of student learning
difficulties. His efforts will address generalizable learning
issues which can inform other projects in the nation. Co-PI
Allan Feldman will document the organizational development
of STEMTEC.
- Dissemination: Co-PI D'Avanzo will lead
in dissemination of results (Section 15). This will involve
arranging for the preparation of videos, obtaining information
about producing computer software, organizing STEMTEC research
conferences, and coordinating publication and presentation
efforts by STEMTEC participants.
- Campus Coordinators: Each campus will have a coordinator,
in most cases an administrative staff member, who will ensure
the smooth operation of STEMTEC enterprise on the campus.
He or she will relay notices to the students, college faculty
and teachers participating in the project affiliated with
that college, assist in campus budgetary management, and
facilitate the school experiences of the undergraduates
on their campuses. Campus coordinators will meet monthly
with PI Sternheim and Co-PI's Wilson and Feldman
to review overall STEMTEC progress and the teaching opportunities
programs.
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We expect to see significant, measurable results in addressing
each of our project goals. The summer workshops will train a
total of 80 college faculty in the new pedagogical approaches,
enabling them to create or modify approximately 74 courses.
(Some faculty in the teams wlll serve as resources and will
not develop their own courses.) A larger group of college faculty
will be affected by the seminars and workshops comprising the
internal dissemination efforts.
After completion of the summative evaluation of the new courses,
we will describe them and the evaluation results in publications,
and in talks and workshops at national and regional meetings.
One focus of our analysis and description of the courses is
how changing the learning environment in science and math
classrooms leads to students being more interested in learning
and, consequently, in teaching science and math. Our program
will result in the reform of approximately 74 courses in 5
disciplines and in 8 quite different colleges. The total annual
enrollment in those courses will be in the thousands since
large introductory courses will be modified. The number of
science and math majors exposed to teaching experiences will
also be large, 100 or more annually.
Findings about getting students interested in learning and
teaching from this extraordinarily rich base will be transferable
to a wide range of institutions. The evaluation will also
help us understand which kinds of activities with schools
and children draw college students into teaching careers.
Educators will be interested to know whether any of these
exposures is especially effective or if it is the variety
of interactions with children that increases the population
of college students interested in teaching. We are especially
interested in the contributions made by the mentor teachers
and the workshops for the participating students.
We expect to see a change in the cultures of the eight participating
colleges. By changing science and mathematics courses and
programs so that they are more welcoming to prospective teachers,
they will be more welcoming to all undergraduates. The result
would be that science and mathematics will be seen as worthwhile
majors for all undergraduates. This will help us to reach
"the second tier" (Tobias, 1990).
The project will have its greatest impact on the preservice
education of elementary teachers and of secondary science
and math teachers. The elementary teachers will have a sounder
base in these disciplines, and will be prepared to teach them
using the pedagogical methods incorporated into the new courses.
Science and math majors who become secondary teachers will
have profited from experiencing the new pedagogies. The improved
pedagogy and the recruiting efforts will produce significant
increases in the number of women and minorities entering science
and math teaching; CETP scholarships will allow 40 minority
students to complete science and math teaching programs. The
project will also improve the teaching of science and math
in Western Massachusetts, since teachers who participate in
the curriculum development committees and as mentors for undergraduates
will increase their content and pedagogical knowledge. The
use of educational technology in its many forms is a central
part of STEMTEC. The infusion of educational technology into
the new and revised courses as well as the educational technology
courses will be adaptable to other campuses. Intelligent tutoring
systems will be developed by STEMTEC and made available for
national distribution.
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Assessment and evaluation will be carried out at multiple
levels by a carefully assembled team of four senior staff,
with the aid of two graduate students and a staff assistant
(See Section 11). The plan is organized into two major sections:
course reform efforts and teacher recruitment. The evaluation
team will document the activities of the participants, inform
the project managers of progress with respect to major milestones
for the project, and implement the comprehensive formative
and summative evaluation plan described below.
Course reform efforts
A major element of the course reform evaluation will determine
the extent of changes in instruction and course materials of
college science and mathematics courses. We intend to use course
evaluation protocols and assess student changes based on student
responses on these instruments. We also intend to identify specific,
successful courses and professors who, after participating in
the workshops or curriculum committees, have significantly changed
the way they teach. In these instances we will prepare more
in depth case studies leading to publishable findings.
Formative evaluation will use the techniques of in-class
observations, teacher evaluations, and student evaluations
to provide ongoing feedback to project planners on how project
goals are being met. Formative evaluation of course development
will include data review sessions with the instructors. These
will identify which parts of the course are working, which
need modification, and to set out strategies for
improvement.
Courses in which ambitious or disseminatable changes are
being attempted will be targeted for additional formative
evaluation. It will identify key interactions and any critical
barriers to learning that are generalizable and will lead
to informative publications. It will also give critical feedback
on content and process learning objectives with specific reference
to the five teaching strategies.
Summative evaluation will be implemented by an independent
third party (the Donahue Institute). The impact of course
reform on students will be measured through the use of questionnaires,
focus groups of students, course evaluations, and key student
performance indicators (such as final course grades, quiz
and homework grades, and grades on standardized tests). Changes
in student attitudes toward teaching will be measured using
surveys and focus groups. Finally, interviews and videotaping
of selected individual faculty will provide in-depth understanding
of the difficulties and opportunities involved in the reform
process.
Teacher recruitment
The evaluation team will document and evaluate the activities
designed to increase the number of science, mathematics, and
engineering majors choosing to become teachers, and to improve
the induction of new science and mathematics teachers into the
profession.
Formative evaluation will be accomplished through the use
of observations, survey instruments, and focus groups to provide
ongoing feedback to the PI's. Periodic reviews of progress
with respect to identified milestones will inform management
of any needed modifications to their efforts. A major function
of the summative evaluation in the area of recruiting will
be the documentation of the extent to which science and mathematics
majors, especially women and minorities, choose to enter the
teaching profession. Because of the symbiotic nature of this
project, a second function of the summative evaluation is
to determine the effect of the school/college interactions
on both parties.
In addition to the evaluation and documentation activities
described above, co-PI Feldman, an experienced program evaluator,
will lead a team that will document the implementation and
evolution of STEMTEC at the organizational level. Ethnographic
and action research methods will be used to document the ways
in which this multi-institutional reform project works. The
information will be of particular importance to NSF in its
attempts to replicate CTEP reform projects.
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